EU-US (TTIP)

In February 2013, US President Barack Obama used his State of the Union address to announce the launch of negotiations towards a comprehensive free trade and investment agreement between the USA and the European Union. The first round of negotiations, held in July that year, represented the realisation of a dream long held by the business lobbyists of the TransAtlantic Business Dialogue, who had pressed for a free trade agreement between the EU and USA since the 1990s. Yet the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) seeks to be more ambitious than any previous trade deal, encompassing a vast range of issue areas in order to reengineer the social and economic landscape on both sides of the Atlantic in favour of capital.

Given that most tariffs between the EU and USA are already at minimal levels, the central focus of the negotiations is the removal of regulatory barriers to trade. This deregulation will contribute 80 per cent of the total corporate gains from TTIP, according to official calculations, yet the ‘barriers’ to be removed include some of the most important rules and standards that safeguard public health, labour rights and the environment. Negotiators are also keen to remove rules that protect local economies and jobs from unfair competition, with potentially devastating consequences. The official assessment undertaken for the European Commission in 2013 calculated that TTIP will lead directly to the loss of at least one million jobs in the EU and USA combined.

Where the negotiations are unable to complete this deregulatory agenda, TTIP seeks to harmonise regulations. Any proposed new regulations in the future could be screened in order to minimise their impact on private sector activity. If national governments do still introduce any new laws or regulations on corporate activity, TTIP will include provisions for an investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) mechanism to allow foreign investors to sue the host country in their own privileged court system for any resulting loss of future profits.

The EU and USA have seen their global economic importance diminish since the Second World War, so that they now represent around half of world GDP rather than three quarters, as before. In geopolitical terms, TTIP is an attempt to restore the transatlantic alliance in response to the challenge of emerging economies such as Brazil, India and China. Frustrated at no longer being able to impose their will unchallenged in the multilateral forum of the WTO, the EU and USA have identified TTIP as their opportunity to devise together a template for all future trade deals around the world.

The other geopolitical target of TTIP is Russia. The negotiation of increased exports of oil and gas from the USA to Europe is explicitly designed to break the dependence of Central and Eastern European states on energy supplies from Russia, with US negotiators speaking openly of TTIP as the ‘economic NATO’ that will allow Washington to isolate Moscow as it did in the Cold War. Yet TTIP will thereby condemn Europe to decades of dependency on fossil fuels from North America, just when the reality of climate change demands an immediate transition to clean energy sources. Despite its admission that TTIP will lead to millions of tonnes of extra CO2 emissions, the European Commission is still using the negotiations to press for unrestricted access to US energy supplies.

There is now an unprecedented movement of mass opposition against TTIP in Europe. Anti-TTIP platforms have been established in every one of the 28 EU member states, and the self-organised European Citizens’ Initiative against TTIP and CETA raised over 3.3 million signatures in its first year alone. US labour and environmental groups are also raising their voices against TTIP, even if the debate in the USA has been more focused on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) instead. The EU-US trade negotiations are fast becoming a toxic political issue at national and international levels alike, as citizens recognise that the fight over TTIP is a fight for our very future.

That’s in part because of a long-running catch 22: the US won’t contemplate a deal that doesn’t include agricultural goods, and the EU, keen to protect its own farmers and maintain food standards, refuses to allow a deal that does include them.

The US negotiating objectives clearly intend to cover agriculture broadly. One of the trade negotiation mandates adopted by the EU addresses domestic regulatory changes which does not exclude agriculture.

Together with the US Government and the EU Commission corporation representatives compose a free trade agreement called TTIP in secret negotiations. It’s goal is to crack down trading obstacles. This vague formulation concretely means, that social, health and ecological standards in the EU will be lowered.

MORE, the Movement for Responsibility in Trade Agreements, an association of European SMEs and citizens, was created to ensure that trade agreements such as TTIP serve business and society equitably, and to protect SMEs in Europe and the USA.

MORE, the Movement for Responsibility in Trade Agreements, is an association of European SMEs and citizens created to ensure that trade agreements such as TTIP serve business and society equitably, and to protect SMEs in Europe and the USA.

Web tool set up by AK Europa, ÖGB Europabüro and Friends of the Earth Europet to help people take part in the EU consultation — until 6 July 2014 — on investor-state dispute settlement as proposed for the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership.

STOP TTIP (Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership) working group is working to help inform and engage the public about the serious consequences of the US- EU Free Trade Agreement currently being negotiated in secret

Organisations from all across Europe are currently gearing up for a European Citizens’ Initiative with the aim of repealing the European Union’s negotiating mandate for the Transatlantic Trade Investor Partnership and not concluding the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement.

Lobby group representing 70 global companies headquartered in the US and EU, created in 2013 as the result of a merger between TransAtlantic Business Dialogue (TABD) and European-American Business Council (EABC).

Greenpeace Netherlands has released secret EU-US #TTIP negotiations. You should have access to these texts, because democracy needs transparency! TTIP poses a great threat to the environment and food safety. #TTIPleaks

TTIP - No Thanks! A coalition of German NGOs active in the field of agriculture, environment, development and trade policy was launched to critically monitor the negotiations between the EU Commission and the US government.

This site is an initiative of the Green/EFA Group of the European Parliament, a platform for concerned stakeholders to discuss the current state of the negotiations and what they could mean for citizens and democracy on both sides of the Atlantic.

17-May-2019PIANGO

Despite the failures of the EPA to deliver real development to Pacific countries it looks as though the European Union will once again, through the Post Cotonou Agreement, push for enhanced and undistorted access for European investments to Pacific resources.

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